U.S.-based chipmaker Qualcomm said Tuesday that it has promoted Lee Te-won, the head of Qualcomm Korea’s R&D center as the president of its Korean office.

The newly appointed president founded audio solutions start-up SoftMax in 2002, which was acquired by the chip company in 2007. Since the takeover, Lee has been working for the chipmaker’s research and development center.

Before joining Qualcomm, Lee served as a neural computation professor at University of California, San Diego. He also worked as a research associate at Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California and a research fellow at Max-Planck Institute in Germany.

He received his master’s degree and doctorate in electronic engineering from Technical University of Berlin in 1995 and 1997, respectively.

Qualcomm has been supplying its mobile chip processors to major Korean smartphone-makers including Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics.

Its relationship with the Korean firms has gone sour as the two Korean tech giants have recently been trying to wean themselves off the U.S. firm.

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)